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Bauer et al. argued that another important feature supported by their system is effective version
control. The base text layer is read-only and all annotation layers are modeled as separate sequences. In
practice, they use a web server that handles all service requests <strong>in</strong> a RESTful manner. 323 The “virtualtext
documents” are considered to be resources that can have the follow<strong>in</strong>g version control operations:
list (which shows the base text layer); create (which adds a new and time-stamped annotation); and
show (which gets the appropriate version of the file). To support the creation of digital critical editions,
Bauer et al. designed their own XML editor 324 that manages their custom XML schema and supports
work<strong>in</strong>g with both the layered XML file created us<strong>in</strong>g the Hypereidoc schema and the flat file format
used to create compatible TEI P5 documents. In sum, Bauer et al. illustrated the importance of
develop<strong>in</strong>g schemas and tools that support the representation of multiple scholarly arguments <strong>in</strong> the
creation of digital critical editions of texts, whether epigraphic or papyrological.
Onl<strong>in</strong>e Epigraphy Databases
The sheer breadth of material available onl<strong>in</strong>e and the active nature of this discipl<strong>in</strong>e are illustrated by
the community-ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed blog Current Epigraphy, 325 which reports news and events <strong>in</strong> Greek and
Lat<strong>in</strong> epigraphy and publishes workshop and conference announcements, notices of new discoveries,
and publications and also provides descriptive l<strong>in</strong>ks to digital epigraphy projects. Digital epigraphy
projects are greatly varied, some <strong>in</strong>clude a small number of <strong>in</strong>scriptions from a particular area 326 while
others <strong>in</strong>clude selected <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> only Greek 327 or Lat<strong>in</strong> 328 (typically with a chronological,
geographic or thematic focus), and some small projects focus on a particular type of <strong>in</strong>scription. 329
This subsection provides an overview of some of the larger projects 330 and research that explores the
major challenges fac<strong>in</strong>g this field <strong>in</strong> the digital world.
One of the largest Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>scription projects available onl<strong>in</strong>e is the Corpus Inscriptionum Lat<strong>in</strong>arum
(CIL), 331 a website that provides descriptive <strong>in</strong>formation regard<strong>in</strong>g the CIL publication series and
limited digital access to some of the <strong>in</strong>scriptions. Theodor Mommsen formed the CIL <strong>in</strong> 1853, with the
purpose of collect<strong>in</strong>g and publish<strong>in</strong>g all Lat<strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>scriptions <strong>in</strong> an organized and scientific manner, and
the publication of new and the reissue of edited volumes cont<strong>in</strong>ue. 332 The CIL conta<strong>in</strong>s Lat<strong>in</strong>
<strong>in</strong>scriptions from the entire former Roman Empire, and publications were arranged by region and
<strong>in</strong>scription type. Electronic access to a “collection of squeezes, photographs and bibliographical
references ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed by the CIL research centre, sorted by <strong>in</strong>scription-number” is provided through
the “Archivum Corporis Electronicum.” 333 The database can be searched only by CIL volume and
<strong>in</strong>scription number, but records for <strong>in</strong>dividual <strong>in</strong>scriptions can conta<strong>in</strong> digital images of the <strong>in</strong>scriptions
323 REST stands for “REpresentational State Transfer,” and RESTful web services have “a key design idiom that embraces a stateless client-server
architecture <strong>in</strong> which the web services are viewed as resources and can be identified by their URLs. Web service clients that want to use these resources
access a particular representation by transferr<strong>in</strong>g application content us<strong>in</strong>g a small globally def<strong>in</strong>ed set of remote methods that describe the action to be
performed on the resource. REST is an analytical description of the exist<strong>in</strong>g web architecture, and thus the <strong>in</strong>terplay between the style and the underly<strong>in</strong>g
HTTP protocol appears seamless.” http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/WebServices/restful/
324 http://hypereidoc.elte.hu/i=editor/<strong>in</strong>dex
325 http://www.currentepigraphy.org/
326 Such as the Cyprus Inscriptions Database (http://paspserver.class.utexas.edu/cyprus/)
327 See, for example, “Po<strong>in</strong>ikastas: Epigraphic Sources for Early Greek Writ<strong>in</strong>g,” http://po<strong>in</strong>ikastas.csad.ox.ac.uk/
328 For example, see “Images Italicae” (http://icls.sas.ac.uk/imag<strong>in</strong>esit/)
329 See, for example, “Curse Tablets from Roman Brita<strong>in</strong>”, http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/<strong>in</strong>dex.shtml
330 For a grow<strong>in</strong>g list of projects, see http://delicious.com/AlisonBabeu/clir-review+epigraphy
331 http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/dateien/forschung.html
332 Currently there are 17 volumes <strong>in</strong> 70 parts (hold<strong>in</strong>g 180,000 <strong>in</strong>scriptions) with 13 supplementary volumes that <strong>in</strong>clude illustrations and <strong>in</strong>dexes; see
http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/dateien/cil_baende.html. Websites have also been created for some <strong>in</strong>dividual volumes, such as a new edition of Corpus
Inscriptionum Lat<strong>in</strong>arum, vol. II: Inscriptiones Hispaniae Lat<strong>in</strong>ae (http://www2.uah.es/imag<strong>in</strong>es_cilii/)
333 http://cil.bbaw.de/cil_en/dateien/hilfsmittel.html